Ford has cause for confidence. The court accepts only about 12 per cent of the cases it is asked to take. The lawyer who filed the application, Clayton Ruby, acknowledges that his request is a long shot.

If the court does grant the appeal, Ford could theoretically end up being ousted from office shortly before winning it back again at the ballot box. The court takes about 16 months, on average, to render a decision from the day the appeal is granted — and 16 months from now is a week from the October 2014 mayoral election.

The case could go faster if Ruby wanted it to. If Ruby filed his written submissions well before the court’s deadlines, Supreme Court expert Eugene Meehan said, the case could conceivably be heard as soon as October, with a decision perhaps in the spring of 2014 — still during the election campaign but months from voting day.

“The appellant has a lot of control here to move this matter through very quickly. If they want to,” said Meehan, who specializes in Supreme Court work at the Ottawa firm Supreme Advocacy LLP.

It is also possible that the case could be expedited upon request from either Ford or Ruby. Jeff Beedell, an Ottawa lawyer specializing in the Supreme Court at McMillan LLP, said “the nature of the dispute could well provide a basis for such an order.”

A three-justice panel made the decision on whether to take the case. The court accepts cases in which it believes there are legal questions of significant public importance.

Ruby, acting for resident Paul Magder, argued in a written submission that the January Divisional Court decision that kept Ford in office raises “legal questions that are fundamentally important to all municipalities and all Canadians.”

Ford’s lawyer, Alan Lenczner, argued that the case “does not raise legal questions of public or national importance.”

Magder contends that Ford violated provincial conflict of interest law in February 2012, when the mayor cast a vote at council to excuse himself from repaying $3,150 to lobbyists and another company whose donations to his football foundation he had improperly accepted.

He won at the Superior Court in November, and Ford was ordered out of office; Justice Charles Hackland said Ford’s actions “were characterized by ignorance of the law and a lack of diligence.” But a judge granted Ford a “stay” of the decision pending his appeal, which he then won at the Divisional Court in January.

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